According to the project director, there is no reason to worry that the visuals in the game will deteriorate, even though the game has not been released yet.
The third and final part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy will be the only one in the series released on all modern gaming platforms. While Switch 2 and Xbox players welcomed this multiplatform decision, many expressed concern that the final part of the trilogy would compromise visual quality due to the Nintendo Switch’s and Xbox Series S’s lower specifications and continued use of Unreal Engine 4. However, the development team is taking the differences between platforms into account while basing the game on the leading version: the PC version.
While it is unclear why the Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series S will not slow down the third part of Final Fantasy VII Remake, Naoki Hamaguchi, the game’s director, provided a thorough explanation, breaking things down component by component. He started with potential ROM limitations from Nintendo Switch 2 cartridges. Since the game will be released as a game key card, file size is not an issue on other platforms. Differences in the CPUs of the systems are also unlikely to cause concern. The last concern for fans, which Hamaguchi considers the most important, relates to the GPU. Even so, he believes there will be no problems thanks to the team’s development approach, which scales down the PC version and focuses on optimization. After his exhaustive explanation, Hamaguchi provided an update on the game’s status.
“The trilogy’s quality will not diminish. That’s not the kind of development structure we have. I think I have no choice but to keep saying this. The Nintendo Switch 2 has plenty of RAM, so it shouldn’t be affected. While it will struggle with the Xbox Series S, that issue has been addressed by fine-tuning each platform. Therefore, RAM issues won’t affect other platforms. Currently, if a game runs at 30 FPS on the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch 2, or Xbox Series S, it should run at 60 FPS on a high-end platform. In other words, we don’t design games assuming they’ll run at 30 FPS on a high-end CPU and use all its capacity. For hardware with CPU power to spare, we scale only the density of NPCs in towns, such as their number. This means towns may feel livelier on high-spec hardware while having fewer NPCs on other hardware.
A huge number of customers have purchased the Final Fantasy VII Remake series on Steam and the Epic Games Store, so we are also mindful of creating assets for the broader PC market during development. That’s why we create 3D asset data with the highest quality based on PCs. As a basic design principle, we don’t conform to low standards but rather create assets for higher-end use. We call this reduction; the design involves adjusting and tuning the asset level to suit each platform. In that sense, this design philosophy doesn’t affect high-spec platforms. This isn’t just something we do; it’s a relatively common way of thinking in game development environments these days.
Development is proceeding on schedule, and the game is now playable. As a team, we are making a final push to continue developing the game, and the quality is improving day by day. As a repeat player, you will see different scenery every day, which makes it exciting. I think that, in the not-too-distant future, we will have an opportunity to share some information with you,” said Naoki Hamaguchi in an interview with Automaton. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait much longer to see this highly anticipated game in action.
